


Stars Fly

by RandomReader13



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Batfam fluff, Batfamily Feels, Batfamily Shenanigans, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Bruce is a good dad, Camping, Families of Choice, Family Fluff, Fluff, Found Families, Gen, Here I am with another fluffy piece instead of working on DA&DB, Jason Todd is Robin, That should be a tag by now, This is pure fluff, Tiny baby Jason, almost, fight me dc, twelve year olds are super hyper, wait maybe a tiny tiiiiiny hint of angst???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 09:42:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18280595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomReader13/pseuds/RandomReader13
Summary: Just a good dad and his hyper son on a camping trip.





	Stars Fly

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! Y'all asked for more family fluff so hERE IT IS  
> Comments are the food of the soul so if anyone feels inspired.... <3

Bruce slid the heavy backpack off his shoulders and looked around the camping spot, hands on his hips. “Alright! What should we do first? There’re some great hiking trails near here.”

Jason was laying on the floor where he had fallen as soon as Bruce stopped walking. “You want to do _more walking_?” he panted, struggling to sit up with the straps of his backpack still half-looped around his arms.

Bruce grinned. “Are you kidding? We’ve just gotten started!” His eyes twinkled as Jason moaned. “We can leave some of the stuff here. I rented out the whole place so we don’t have to worry about anyone taking anything.”

“Somethin’s wrong with the air here,” Jason gasped, clutching at his chest. “It’s poisoned or somethin’.”

“That’s called being clean.” Bruce waited a second. “How do you expect to be Robin if you can’t even walk a few miles?”

Jason scowled up at him. “You won’t even let me start training yet, you can’t go and flip it around now!”

Bruce folded his arms and tilted his head to the side, raising an eyebrow to hide the smile that was trying to break out. It was true, he wouldn’t let Jason start training until he was a healthy weight but there was no way he was admitting anything now.

Jason managed to untangle himself from his backpack only to flop more dramatically on the ground. “Bruuuce,” he moaned. “My legs are dying. My shoes are falling apart. Look at them!” He stuck one leg in the air. “Look at them, Bruce.”

Bruce grabbed Jason’s ankle and examined the bottom of his sneaker. “Hmm...yes I see...very serious.” Jason yelped as Bruce hoisted him off the ground. “I’m seeing a lot of wear and tear on the sole,” Bruce informed him gravely, ignoring the way Jason was swatting at his legs. “I think we might have to go back.”

“Bruce!” Jason squeaked. “Lemme down!”

“What? But I thought you couldn’t move?” Bruce started walking towards the sign that said ‘Bearhead Trail’, carefully keeping Jason’s head from hitting the ground.

“Bruce!” Jason shrieked, giggling hysterically. He put his hands down on the ground as Bruce lowered his arm and started walking on them. Bruce kept his hand wrapped around the boy’s ankle, though; Jason had only started learning some basic acrobatics recently, wouldn’t want him to faceplant. Jason had completely recovered from his ‘exhaustion’ at this point and bounced beside Bruce as they started up the trail. “Are we gonna see a bear? How ‘bout a wolf? _Ooh_ , a mountain lion!”

“I don’t think we’ll be seeing any of those, Jaylad. And you wouldn’t be going near them even if we did.” Bruce raised an eyebrow as Jason pouted up at him. “Right?”

“You’re no fun,” Jason grumbled, crossing his arms. A second later he forgot his irritation and made a mad dash for the side of the trail. Bruce grabbed him by the collar.

“And where exactly are you going?”

“There’s nothin’ to see on this boring-ass trail,” Jason complained.

“Language. And we’ve been walking for two minutes.” Bruce ignored Jason’s indignant cry of “Ass ain’t even a curse!” and looked ahead. “Give it some time and I’m sure we’ll see something. It helps if you’re _quiet_.”

Jason took that advice to heart...for about thirty seconds, rambling about how school was going and all the ‘stupid-tall trees’. “Hey Bruce, what’s that weird lookin’ plant- HOLY SHIT ARE THOSE FUCKING SKULLS?!”

“Language,” Bruce said, already coming close to surrendering the issue.

“FORGET MY LANGUAGE THE PLANT IS GROWING FUCKING SKULLS BRUCE!”

“It’s a snapdragon.” Bruce crouched down in front of the plant. “You don’t see them much in the wild. That’s what they look like when they’ve gone to seed.”

“Holy shit that’s so metal,” Jason whispered. He reached out a hand before looking at Bruce for confirmation. Bruce nodded so Jason carefully poked one of the seed pods. “Can I take one?”

“Sure.”

“Alfred’s gonna love this, holy shit.”

“Jason.”

“Yeah, yeah, holy cow or whatever.” Jason carefully slipped the seed pod into the little box that had come with his nature-kit. Bruce found it endearing that Jason, when given access to a host of top-quality sample-collecting gear, still chose to go with something from Target. It was less endearing when he said, “What else is out here?!” and dashed off. Bruce cast his eyes to heaven before running after him. It was times like these he was glad for his training regimen. He caught up to Jason just as the boy was looking fully ready to go leaping into a small ravine.

“ _Jason_.”

“Aw come on,” the twelve-year-old whined, kicking at Bruce’s shins as he was hauled back. “There’s gotta be some cool shit down there!”

“First of all, you could get hurt.” Jason scoffed. Bruce narrowed his eyes in warning. “Secondly, you need to watch your mouth or we _will_ go back to the car.”

Jason eyed him, assessing how serious he was. Bruce stared back steadily. Jason broke their gaze, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Whatever.”

Bruce was fully used to moody children at this point and started back down the trail. After a few minutes, he put a hand on Jason’s chest to stop him. “Wha-” Jason cut off as Bruce put a finger to his lips. Bruce pointed through the trees. Jason turned and squinted. “I don’t see-” A brown form moved through the trees. Jason’s eyes widened. He grabbed Bruce’s arm. “Bruce,” he whispered. “Bruce!”

“I know,” Bruce whispered back. The stood, transfixed, as the deer ambled through the trees. Neither of them moved until the sound of it moving through the underbrush died away.

“Holy- crap,” Jason amended, glancing at Bruce. “It was right there!”

“Yep. New Jersey has a lot of deer. We’ll probably see more if we’re quiet.”

The hike was mostly uneventful after that. They saw a small cluster of deer, Jason found several ‘cool rocks’, and Bruce made a note to himself to get him some geology books. They took a break sitting on an old log and Bruce just looked at Jason. Sun and shadow danced across his face as the trees moved in the breeze. His eyes shone and his mouth was partly open in a grin. So much had changed from that angry, terrified boy of a few months ago. Bruce wasn’t naive enough to think that everything would be sunshine and roses from now on, but right here, right now was really damn close. Bruce wished he could take a picture without ruining the moment, but he knew he would never forget this, even without one.

A squirrel chittered and jumped between trees. Jason got up and wandered after it, not running for once. Bruce followed, hands stuffed in his pockets. There was a curve in the path and Jason paused a few yards ahead of Bruce. He looked back at Bruce, then forward again. Bruce, sensing trouble on the horizon, picked up his pace a little. Jason looked at him once more before running forward, his whoop of excitement making Bruce’s heart beat a little faster. Rounding the corner, he gave in to the urge to facepalm. The trail turned again a little way ahead, around a cluster of large rocks. A cluster of large rocks that Jason was making a beeline for. A cluster of large rocks that probably weren’t safe to climb on and could tumble down any minute, trapping too-small children beneath them because stupid parents weren’t fast enough to save their children from imminent demise.

“Jason, stop!” Bruce yelled, charging forward. Even if Jason had been the type of child to listen to his parent right away -- Bruce was convinced such children existed only in fantasy -- it was too late. Jason had many years of experience climbing buildings, both for fun and necessity, and he was already halfway up the pile. Bruce hovered beneath him, feeling slightly ridiculous. He was planning on making Jason Robin for crying out loud, he’d face danger and heights much worse than this. Bruce twitched at the idea and for one, wonderful moment, imagined Jason being okay with not being Robin, with just being...Jason, his son. But he had learned his lesson with Dick that trying to protect his sons inevitably lead to them sneaking out on their own or running away and being in so much _more_ danger than they would have been if he had just _been there to protect them-_

“ _Jason Peter Todd-_ ”

“I’m fine Bruce!” Jason yelled, letting go of the rock face with one hand and twisting to look down at Bruce, who was trying to stave off a heart attack.

“Three-point rule!” he yelled back. Jason rolled his eyes but thankfully turned back to the rock, wedging the foot that had been dangling mid-air into a crevice.

“Happy now?!”

“I’ll be happy once you get down from there!”

“You know,” Jason yelled, “I’m gonna be doin’ a lot more dangerous shi- uh, stuff than this when I’m Robin!”

“You’ll be trained then.”

“I’d be trained now if ya didn’t keep flakin’ on me!”

“I’m not ‘flaking’ on you Jason, I told you, you could start training when you’re a healthy weight. You’re still off that by a bit.” Jason devolved into annoyed muttering that Bruce was glad he couldn’t hear. He didn’t actually want to go back to the car. Bruce decided to try a different strategy. “Jason please get down, I don’t want to have to tell Alfred you fell and broke your arm.”

Jason huffed. “I told you, Bruce, I’m _fine_.” He pulled himself up a few more inches to prove his point. Bruce saw the pebbles under Jason’s right foot, scattered amongst the cracks and crevices of the larger rocks, shift. He opened his mouth to shout a warning but it was too late. Jason pushed up on his right leg, straining for a higher handhold. His foot slipped. Bruce’s heart stopped. Jason yelped, hands scrabbling for purchase as he fell backward.

“Kick off the wall!” Bruce yelled. He didn’t really expect Jason to manage it, but thankfully Jason’s wild flail pushed him back enough that Bruce could get fully under him. He caught the boy with a grunt and took several large steps back. “Are you alright?” he asked, setting Jason on his feet and checking him for injuries. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine!” Jason yelled, slapping at his hands.

Bruce pulled him into a crushing hug. “Don’t _do_ that.” His heart was pounding so hard he thought it would fly right out of his chest. He took a moment to breathe before holding Jason out at arm’s length. “Jason. Jason, look at me.” A pair of defiant teal eyes met his, but Bruce knew Jason well enough to see the fear half-hidden in them. “You have to _listen_ to me, okay? I don’t want you getting hurt.”

Jason mumbled something half-hearted but nodded. He added though, as Bruce was standing up, “That wouldna happened in Gotham. Stupid rocks.” He kicked at a pebble. Bruce rolled his eyes and scooped Jason into his arms. The boy squawked and flailed. “Lemme down!”

“You have lost your walking privileges,” Bruce declared, starting back to the campsite. If he also just wanted to hold Jason, safe, unhurt Jason, close for a bit, no one had to know. Jason tried kicking off his chest and rolling out of his grip but eventually went limp.

“You’re so lame.”

“If I’m lame what does that make you?”

“I’m the only thing that keeps you from descending into obscurity or being mocked by the press.”

“Is that so?” Jason yelped as Bruce flipped him over his shoulder.

“This is assault!” Jason said, whacking Bruce’s back. “Manhandling! Kidnapping!”

“Have you forgotten last month already, Mr. Todd-Wayne?”

“I take it back.”

“Nope, no take-backs. You’re stuck with me.”

Jason groaned dramatically and Bruce’s couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped him. They reached the campsite and Bruce lowered Jason -- who had spent the last five minutes alternating between loud complaining and trying to knee him in the face -- to the ground for the second time in as many hours. He jumped to his feet. “I’m bored. And hungry. Where’re the snacks?” Bruce followed as Jason wandered off to the cooler they had stuck under a tree with the tents. “There’s just fu-ricking carrot sticks and, like, celery?! Where's the marshmallows? Cam told me those were important.”

“Alfred packed the food,” Bruce said, catching a baggie of grapes that was pitched at his head. Jason scowled at a carrot as if it had betrayed him before biting it in half.

“Alfie should know better than this,” he said. Bruce grimaced as orange crumbs flew from Jason’s mouth.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Jason pointed at Bruce with a carrot. “We are actually in the wild right now, Bruce. This is our chance to live like we were raised by wolves. Who knows, maybe we were.”

Bruce’s eyes glinted with amusement. “I wouldn’t really call this the _wild_ , Jaylad.”

Jason gestured at the surrounding trees so vehemently Bruce almost expected him to fall over. “No roads, no houses, no people, trees ‘n sh-tuff, we saw like _five_ deer.” He bit into an apple. “Whaddya want, Bruce? A wolf or somethin’?”

“How about a canoe ride?”

“Wha?”

Bruce gestured at another path. “There’s a lake just a few minutes from here. They have canoes and I,” he pulled a key out of his pocket, “rented one.”

Jason faltered, teeth halfway stuck in his apple. He bit off a chunk but dropped it into his hand instead of waiting to chew before speaking. Bruce grimaced. “What, like a boat?” He stuck the bit of apple back in his mouth.

“Yes.”

Jason played with the rest of his apple. “Uh...I’m kinda tired. How ‘bout we make a fire!”

Bruce cocked his head to one side. “It’s not late enough to make a fire.”

“Shouldn’t we at least collect wood?” Jason’s ears were turning red and he tucked his chin to his chest. “Did Alfie pack a card game or somethin’?”

“What’s wrong, Jason?”

“Nothin’!”

Bruce frowned. Jason’s face was red, his shoulders were hunched up by his ears, and he was glaring at his apple as if he could make it spontaneously combust. Something was clearly wrong. He softened his voice, consciously making his body language look as non-threatening as possible. “Jason-”

“Shut up!” Jason yelled, flinging his apple and bolting. Bruce batted it away and went to follow but faltered. He paused, thinking. When Dick ran off he usually wanted to be followed, for Bruce to show that he cared enough to chase after him. It had taken a long time for Bruce to realize. But Jason was different. With Jason, being followed didn’t mean someone caring enough to bother, it meant a possible threat that he couldn’t escape. That had only taken two disastrous panic-attacks to sink in. But Bruce couldn’t just let him run around alone in the woods. He’d get lost. Bruce rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. None of the parenting books he’d read had covered this. He waited a minute before slowly walking in the direction Jason had run, hands stuffed in his pockets, looking for all the world like he was just going for a stroll.

It didn’t take long to find him. Jason hadn’t started learning stealth yet and didn’t know how to navigate around woods at all, so his trail looked more like the kind of thing a bear would leave than a tiny, malnourished twelve-year-old. Bruce curved his path so he would be coming from the side, where Jason could clearly see him approaching. He stopped two yards away. Jason’s knees were drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around them and chin resting on top. He obviously saw Bruce but just turned his head away. Bruce took his lack of instant shuffling away as an invitation and slowly walked forward, sitting down with a foot of space between them. He looked up at the branches high above, the leaves turned neon green with sunlight. A squirrel scampered along the ground a little way away.

Jason mumbled something into his knees. Bruce looked at him but didn’t say anything. Jason peeked at him before looking away again. “I can’t swim,” he said. Bruce blinked. He had just opened his mouth to ask why when it hit him. He felt like smacking himself. Of course Jason wouldn’t know how to swim, it’s not like there were many places to learn in inner Gotham! He wasn’t sure what to say. He must have hesitated too long because Jason turned his head to glare at him. “Not everybody has a fucking pool behind their house, yanno! We didn’t even have air conditioning, how were we supposed ta find a pool?! Besides, s’not like you need to know how to swim.” Jason rested his chin back on his knees, glaring at a beetle that was walking over his sneaker. Bruce decided to take the plunge.

“There’s nothing wrong with not knowing how to swim.” He kept his voice neutral.

“Damn right there isn’t.” The fragile tone didn’t suit the defiant words at all.

Bruce turned his shoulders a little to look fully at Jason. “Jason, I would never let you get hurt. If you want to try the canoe I’ll be right there with you and you’ll have a life vest. It’s too cold to go in the water anyway.” Jason glanced at him out the corner of his eye and didn’t say anything. “If you don’t want to, we can try something else,” Bruce continued. He looked around for inspiration and movement overhead caught his eye. “Like bird watching.” Jason grimaced and stood up.

“It’s fine, we can go in the boat,” he muttered. Bruce got up and slowly wrapped an arm around the boy’s shoulders.

“Alright.”

* * *

“I think you have the wrong pole.”

Bruce paused, looking up from threading the tent-pole through the cloth. “What?”

“The instructions say to use pole A. I think that’s pole B.”

Bruce frowned at the pole. “What’s the difference?”

“Uh.” Jason frowned at the instructions, twisting them around. “I think A is...bigger?”

Bruce glanced at the pile of tent pieces. “It doesn’t look any longer.”

Jason threw his hands in the air, paper crumpling. “I dunno.”

Bruce decided to keep doing what he was doing. “Okay, what’s next?”

“You gotta stick A in the opposite side. They cross over in the middle. There’s loops, see.” Jason held out the instructions. Bruce squinted at them and nodded.

“Is it supposed to bend that much?” Jason asked a minute later. Bruce growled in frustration.

“That’s the only way it’s going to get where it needs to be, so hopefully.”

Jason cheered when Bruce finagled the pole into its rightful place. Bruce high-fived him.

“Now we do the pegs!” Jason grabbed a hammer and peg and knelt by the first corner.

“You’d think they’d make these things easier to put up,” Bruce mused, frowning at the instructions as Jason darted from one corner to another.

“Done!”

“Good job, Jaylad.” Bruce ruffled Jason’s hair and looked at the tent. “Should we do mine now?”

“I wanna go inside!” Jason crawled through the opening and Bruce grinned, following him. “Bruce, there’s no room!”

“Are you calling me fat?” Bruce demanded, half-reclined to avoid the ceiling. Jason’s nose was only a few inches away from his, so he got a perfect view of the shit-eating grin on the boy’s face.

“Yes.”

“Why you little-” Jason shrieked with laughter as Bruce tickled him. It turned into an actual shriek as something popped and the whole tent collapsed around them. Bruce pushed the brightly-colored roof off his face. Jason glowered at him. He grinned sheepishly. “That...might have been the wrong pole.”

* * *

“It’s still lame that you used a lighter,” Jason said, pulling his hot dog towards him and poking it before sticking it back over the fire.

“Why make life harder than it has to be?” Bruce asked. “We would have been out here for hours trying to get a fire started with sticks.”

Jason snorted. “You can flake if you wanna but I’m going to learn how to do it _right_.”

“You do that, Jaylad.” Bruce examined his hot dog and decided it was done. “Careful, you don’t want to burn it.”

“How’m I supposed to see when it’s done?”

“It’ll start swelling. You don’t want it to pop because that’ll take all the juices out.”

Jason swung his stick over towards Bruce. “Waddya think?”

Bruce crossed his eyes to see the hot dog stuck in front of his nose. “I think you’re a very good cook, Jay.” Jason beamed, carefully pulling his hot dog off the stick. He bit into it and moaned.

“What makes em so good?”

“I think it’s the air,” Bruce said, leaning back against a log bench with his own food. Jason wouldn’t appreciate the answer, ‘it’s psychosomatic’. “There’s no smog. And we got some exercise, that always makes things taste better.”

Jason grunted in agreement, shoving nearly the entire hot dog into his mouth before grabbing another one to cook.

“Still think we shoulda had marshmallows,” he said after inhaling the second. “Cam said you can’t camp without em.”

Bruce grinned slyly and reached for his backpack. “Well…” He pulled out a bag of marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Jason’s face split with a grin and Bruce found his own matching as he showed the boy how to make the perfect s’more. Aside from a brief moment with a flaming marshmallow torch, he got it quickly and Bruce was content to watch the gleeful widening of his son’s eyes as he bit into it.

“Oh my _God_.” Jason stared from the s’more to Bruce and back again. “Bruce. Bruce, I think I just died.” He leaned in close, giving Bruce a perfect view of the candy staining his cheeks. “I had a _religious experience_ , Bruce.”

“I’m sure you did,” he laughed, grabbing his own marshmallow.

* * *

Bruce stared up at the sky, hundreds of stars twinkling above the clearing. “I’ll have to take you to the desert some time,” he said. “Maybe the Grand Canyon. There’s still light pollution here but when you get out there,” he sucked in a breath, “it’s beautiful.”

Jason looked up from his fourth s’more and followed Bruce’s gaze upward. “Woah.” He slowly scooted closer to Bruce. Bruce didn’t move. Jason could be a lot like a scared cat; if you put too much attention on him he’d get skittish. Jason slowly leaned against him and Bruce carefully lowered his arm over the boy’s shoulders. It was still new, still fragile, this trust Jason had in him. Bruce would do anything to keep it alive. “I’ve never seen stars like this before,” Jason said in an awed whisper. Bruce’s heart ached; for Jason and for all the other kids who grew up in the bowels of Gotham, the constant smog and light blotting out anything other than a few persistent specks. If anyone deserved to see the beauty of an unfiltered universe it was the ones Earth tried to crush.

He pulled Jason closer to him, resting his cheek on his messy hair. The fire crackled and the trees rustled in the breeze as he pointed up at the sky, stories of gods and lovers turned to bears dancing through the air on the backs of flaming sparks that glittered as if the stars themselves had come to rest on earth.

**Author's Note:**

> Bruce doesn't know how to pitch a tent because I have no idea how to either and I said so  
> Jason is 1000% based on my little brother, you can thank him for the hyper ditzy-ness  
> Listen Jason didn't get a childhood so HE'S HAVING IT NOW  
> I live for Bruce just casually and playfully manhandling his tiny children OKAY (if anyone knows of any fics where this happens pls tell me and I will love you forever)  
> Google dead snapdragons you will not be disappointed. Do they grow in Jersey? They do now!


End file.
